The Necromancer's Grimoire

by Annmarie Banks

  She looked at the book in his hands. “He knows you are a mighty warrior.”

  She made her way to the cleft in the hillside and told Garreth to go back to the villa without her. She carried a small satchel of extra clothing and a comb. She had the Grimoire tucked between two folded gowns inside the leather bag.

  The priestess glared at the satchel when she set it on the marble bench. “A necessary evil,” she mumbled.

  “Evil?” Nadira looked at the satchel as well. “I did not sense that it was evil.”

  “The necromancer has tainted it with his desires.” The priestess shook out her hands, making her bracelets tinkle. “But you are correct. It is not evil in itself.’

  “That things can be both good and evil is a lesson I have learned just recently.”

  The priestess agreed. “This is what you have come here to learn. Any belief in either idea will steer your ability away from the truth.”

  “Can you answer some questions first? I have many.”

  The priestess laughed. “I would have been disappointed if you came to me full of your own answers. Sit. Ask.”

  “The necromancer says that I grow something he wants inside me. I cannot see it.”

  The priestess closed her eyes and put a faded hand over hers. “Oh,” she whispered. “I see it.” She opened them and smiled. “No wonder.”

  Nadira was alarmed. “What is it?”

  “Be still. It is an idea. He…” she closed her eyes again, searching, “He is bound somehow, and cannot free himself. He has an incredible fear and he sees that this thing inside you can save him from it. Oh my,” she breathed, “What has he done?” She looked at Nadira. “It is a rare thing for one to have no fear. How is it you have accomplished this?”

  She was puzzled. “I have many fears. I do not know what you mean.”

  The priestess touched her heart. “Those fears are for others, not for yourself.”

  Nadira thought about that. “You are correct,” she said. “I don’t know that I lost my fear…I remember being numb and feeling nothing for a long while. There was that moment after the battle on the mountain. I was afraid. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back. I asked myself what I feared, and I saw it.” She turned to the priestess, “but I replaced the fear with a sense that it didn’t matter either way. I decided to follow my lord Montrose because I admired his courage, and that of his brother. Their strength shamed me in my fear. There was a feeling of giving up myself. That can’t be a good replacement either.”

  “You interpret the feeling as surrender. What you felt was the peace that comes from understanding that you control your emotions. What you think manifests itself in your body as fear or hate or love. You changed your thoughts away from your safety and to his, and the fear faded. When one puts the welfare of others before one’s own, the fear has nothing to grasp. It is that simple. It matters not what drives the thought away from yourself. All mothers know this. There are few that would run away in fear as the lion stalks their infant.

  “Yes.” Nadira felt the flash of a distant memory.

  “And it is an idea you incubate. The necromancer cannot think that thought. It is a thought that would free him from this nameless terror that stalks him. He is incapable of this selflessness that you possess.”

  “How can he steal that from me?” Nadira pressed her belly. “How can he steal an idea?”

  “As you know, only what one has learned, can one use. He seeks to take this strength from you without earning it.” She lost her focus, casting for the necromancer. “He is that desperate.”

  Nadira felt small. “I have encountered him.”

  The priestess nodded. “Yes. I was there.”

  She looked at the aged lady in her blue veils and white hair. “Can you help me? Can we confront him together?”

  “Come with me, Nadira. Let me show you the temple.” The priestess stood and offered Nadira her hand. Her eyes were kind, but Nadira saw that the diversion was a gentle way of telling her that she would face the necromancer alone. She gave the older women her hand and allowed her to lead her through an opening in the stone.

  “We used to have a glorious temple on the hill, marble columns and statues of all the great priestesses going back hundreds of years. People came from every corner of the world to study in our library. We had lectures, study groups, song, dance, parties, and feasts. The joy of existence was worshipped there.” The priestess led her to another chamber, larger than the first, lit with small oil lamps on ledges carved directly into the living stone. The ceiling disappeared into the gloom above her head. Water and fresh air were evident even so deep in the ground. “But when Justinian became emperor a thousand years ago, he had the temple pulled down and the priestess killed. Our acolytes fled with as many scrolls as they could carry, but they could not save everything. What remained behind was burned. We were dispersed and hidden in the houses of powerful people who remained faithful to our work, but without an assembly to build upon the strengths of the gifted and educate them, many of our skills and abilities were lost.”

  The priestess sat her on a carved bench near a tiny waterfall that dripped down the stone and splashed into a shallow basin at her feet. “We found this cave and hid from Justinian. It has remained secret ever since. Those who seek to discover the truth and live in knowledge and peace find their way here and I take them in and keep them.”

  Nadira nodded, remembering when she first heard the priestess’ voice in her head. “You cannot live on water, Lady. How do you sustain yourselves?”

  The priestess shook her bracelets and three young women emerged through a crevasse in the stone. One carried a lamp, one carried a pitcher and one carried a tray. They set their burdens on a raised plinth and bowed. The priestess smiled at them as they departed. “We provide services, as we always have, in exchange for food and wine and oil. On certain days we will receive guests in a place far removed from here. It is always a risk we take, but there are those who have dedicated their lives to protecting us from the Christians and the Muslims. Those who need to know the future or be healed are informed and healed. In exchange for our services, we are able to exist and maintain the teachings necessary to make certain these gifts are not lost to mankind.”

  She poured wine into a horn cup and handed it to Nadira. “Welcome, Nadira the Reader.”

  “Thank you,” she drank the sweet wine, inhaling the fragrance. It was very fine wine. “You have important guests. I can taste their quality.”

  “And we also serve those who cannot pay.” The priestess drank from her own cup. “The knowledge of the ancients is not for sale to the rich. It belongs free to all people. But we must keep body and soul together while we are here.”

  Nadira looked around the chamber. “Many live here? All women?”

  “There are thirty of us. And yes, all women. The men of our religion live in the city. They have lives of citizens and laborers. Women cannot have such a life, as you know. They must belong to a man at menarche and lose their freedom to study or think. Those that show promise come here. I keep them.”

  “I begin to understand. But they are imprisoned as well. Just as you are.”

  The priestess turned her head to look at her. “Our bodies, perhaps.”

  “Oh. True.” Nadira tried to imagine a life where the great events of one’s life took place in the other worlds, and the physical one was more like a dream. She shook her head. “I have so much to learn.”

  “Then let us begin now and waste no time. I need you to lie down here on this couch and let me look inside. I need to see if he still has anything attached to you.” Nadira was led through the gloom to a stone couch piled high with stuffed cushions. “Lie here. Clear your mind, and let me in.”

  She relaxed and tried to drive her worries away. Montrose was lifted from her mind and set away on the caravel to Egypt. William was sent to the library in Toledo. Garreth and Alisdair to a sunny garden. The Templars were set down in a cathedral before an altar.
She had trouble with the reis. Kemaleddin did not go when she tried to send him away. She tried to put him out to sea on the new flagship the sultan had built for him, the glorious Goke, a floating palace with three banks of oars and many cannon. He would not stay. She tried to place him in his walled garden in Istanbul, but he faded among the climbing jasmine and trumpet vines to appear before her again. She sent him to Piri, and told the young captain to hold tightly to his uncle. Piri recoiled from her touch and fled, leaving Kemal behind.

  “Let me try to help you.” The priestess reached inside her for Kemal.

  “Don’t hurt him!” she cried, for the image of Kemal writhed when the priestess touched him.

  “Fascinating.” The priestess withdrew her touch. “He is bound to you with this cord you placed in him when you cracked him open and broke him.” She frowned. “Or perhaps not.” She put her hand over Nadira’s heart. “Oh, my dear, he has placed a cord in you. That is why you cannot put him away.” Nadira tried to sit up, but the priestess pushed her gently down. “I have not seen this before.”

  “How can he do that? I thought one must read the Hermetica to gain that ability.”

  The priestess opened her palms and closed her eyes. She smiled. “Apparently there is another way.” She sighed. “The two of you joined…you entered him too deeply, Nadira. You have a piece of his soul in yours. When you withdrew from him, it came with you.”

  Nadira was stricken with guilt. “I did not know.”

  “No. You were clumsy with inexperience, and you harmed him. It is possible to climb gently into the minds of others. You do not need to rip them apart and make them bleed.”

  Nadira put a hand over her eyes.

  The priestess shook her head and the tiny bells in her headdress that held her veil tinkled and echoed in the stone chamber. “He wonders why he cannot concentrate on his work. He spends much time on the high walls of Istanbul looking west out to sea. His men assume he is deep in thought, planning, analyzing, engaged in the logistics of managing the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean.” The priestess laughed. “What they would say if they knew he was aching for the touch of a woman and the return of his soul? Only you can return that piece of him you stole.”

  Nadira groaned and put her hand where the priestess had touched her. “Here? This is where it is?” She tried to feel it but could not.

  “We will have to work around this.”

  “I did not want to hurt him. I only wanted to see the necromancer. I didn’t know this would happen.” She tried to tug at the invisible cord in her heart. “I can’t fix this.”

  “It does not need to be fixed at this moment.” The priestess’ voice was warm and smooth. “Nadira. Let him be. He does not draw out your energies, but his strength sustains them. You left a piece of you inside him when you withdrew. Do you feel diminished?”

  Nadira shook her head. “No, but the necromancer will hurt him through this connection, as you did when you touched him.”

  “The reis is strong. Strong enough to plant a cord in you without your knowledge. Lie down and calm yourself. I will brush the reis aside gently when I go in. I will not hurt him.”

  Nadira relaxed her body and cleared her mind.

  Evren Farshad was looking out to sea as well. The priestess touched him and the necromancer twitched. He turned in a circle and raised his staff. The horns of the golden calf glowed red. “I feel you, Mother,” he said. “You cannot hide behind that little girl.”

  Nadira’s mind wondered, ‘Mother?’, but the priestess warned her to be still.

  “I do not hide, Evren. You have overstepped your boundaries and we know it.”

  “Stay in your hole, witch. The world of men command it.”

  Nadira felt the priestess’ anger. “The world of women command you to withdraw. Go back to Persia.”

  “Or?” The staff spun around and bright red whirls of light rose over his head and spun into a shimmering cloud of his intent. “She has taken what is mine.”

  Nadira withdrew from the intensity of the necromancer’s cast, but the priestess held her tightly. “He can hurt you only if you believe that he can,” the priestess told her. “Do not let your eyes rule your soul, Nadira. None of your senses have the whole Truth. All of them record the illusion of life. As above, so below.” To Farshad she said, “You know she did not steal the Grimoire. It abandoned you and left with her. It chose her as it had once chosen you. You have failed, Evren. Go back to Persia.”

  The necromancer did not reply, but she saw inside his mind. Whatever he feared had its source in Persia. Before he withdrew, she felt a glimmer of his intent. He waved his staff at her and she felt the heat of his determination strike her. She rolled from the couch and hit the floor with the force of his anger. Then he was gone.

  “We will work on that,” the older woman said. “We will discover where your weakness lies and cut it out. I suspect you harbor a belief in the strength of evil somewhere in your heart.”

  Nadira rubbed her hands over the cool stones of the floor. She felt her failure like a sword thrust through her body.

  The priestess bent down to touch her hair. “You cannot defeat him as long as you have such a strong belief in evil. He uses that to strike you, as you have just seen.”

  “You said yourself,” Nadira said in a small voice, “that the evils of the world are caused by men. Evil exists. I have seen it, felt it. Your fear of it has consumed your life. You have created a massive defense against it inside this cave.”

  The priestess smiled gently. “My belief in evil has troubled me for many years. I know it is there, but I have not the courage to confront it. Instead I built this great wall.”

  Nadira looked up sharply. “Courage?”

  The priestess’s smile faded, but her eyes shone brighter. “I was once walked through an exercise like the one you are about to encounter. I failed miserably. So miserably that my teacher never tried to teach me that lesson again. I cannot shake my belief in evil, but you must.” The priestess made a gesture toward the couch. “Lie down again. I will be with you the entire time.”

  Nadira obeyed warily.

  “Close your eyes,” the priestess told her. “You must pass this test or you will fail any attempt to use the Grimoire in the realms of the necromancer. Do you understand?”

  Nadira nodded, though she could not refrain from asking, “I am to use a book that touches the evils of the world, but am instructed that I cannot use it as long as I have a belief in evil?”

  “It is not as strange as it sounds. You are not merely trying to use a book. Any evil man may use the book for his evil purposes. You are going to conquer what you believe to be evil and all the misery it contains. You cannot do that without losing a belief in evil. Only what you believe can hurt you. Do you understand? To protect yourself from evil, you must lose your definition of it.”

  Nadira nodded again, thinking. How can one unlearn what one has learned?

  The priestess heard her thought. “By learning something new that replaces it. Perhaps when you were a child you believed your mother could solve any problem that troubled you. At some point that belief was replaced by the truth: that she could not.”

  Nadira winced at the mention of her mother. “What are you going to teach me?”

  “That evil does not exist.”

  “Impossible.”

  The priestess nodded, as if agreeing with her. “I have known only one person who had been able to achieve this mastery.” She turned her eyes on Nadira. ”Do you refuse to try?”

  Nadira thought of her friends, of the necromancer. If she did not try then they would suffer from her lack of courage, and for her doubts. She took in a sharp breath to clear her mind of the images that began to force themselves into her inner vision, the results of her imagined failure. “I will. What is the worst that could happen?” She asked honestly.

  “That you realize you cannot travel where the magicians go. That there is a place in this world from which you are b
arred, as I am barred. That evil will continue to exist because you could not vanquish it. Evil proliferates with every soul who believes in it and diminishes with every spirit that does not.”

  “Very well. If it is the only way.”

  “It is.”

  Nadira lay on the couch and the priestess covered her with her blue shawl. The older woman knelt on the hard floor and took her hand. “You must relax. Listen to me carefully. You may question me if you please. It is very important that you answer every question truthfully. You cannot lie to yourself and triumph. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “What is the most horrible thing you can think of?”

  Nadira’s mind immediately went to Montrose and his ruined thumb. Then to Richard and his tortured eyes, then Marcus and his sacrifice. The images flew before her of William’s bloody back and Corbett’s agony, Calvin’s crippling limp. Kemaleddin Reis and his torn soul. The priestess interrupted.

  “Those are indeed painful events, but they are not yours.”

  Her mind went blank at this, and she began to understand what the priestess meant by the difficulty. She tried to squeeze the images of her mother’s death before her but nothing would come. She knew her mother had died in childbirth. She had been there but the images remained dark.

  “What was your mother’s name?” the priestess asked softly.

  “Jasmine,” Nadira answered immediately, and the memory returned in a flash of light and sound. She was at her mother’s bedside, holding her mother’s slender hand. Her mother knew the child was dead and that all her pain had been for nothing.

  Jasmine had turned her head and looked at Nadira with luminous eyes and smiled. She had pressed Nadira’s little-girl hand once, and then went limp. Nadira the child made no sound, but tightened the hold on her mother’s hand. The weeping of the servants in the room grew louder.

  “No.” Nadira sat up on the couch and put her hand through her hair, clearing the strands from her brow as though she could comb out the memory.

  The priestess frowned. “This is not evil. This is sorrow.” The priestess pressed her further. “The truth remains hidden. You deceive only yourself.”